The Ultimate Contradiction

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bDetermined not to be killed off, they came home to the land bthey had lost twice before. They would not lose it a third time— bthrough war or peace, through sword or “democracy.”

bIt was on the basis of their uniqueness that the Jews bfounded political Zionism. It was on that basis that they ap- bproached Turkey and then Britain for help in allowing them to bestablish a national home. It was on that basis that the Bible bChristian instantly understood the demand, and so too the bLeague of Nations and later the United Nations. It was on the bbasis of being Jewish, the same Jewish people that had once blived in that same land, that the Jews demanded a land in which bother people lived, trespassers. There could not have been any bother moral or logical basis. And it was as the Jewish state that bIsrael came into being. The very assumption of a Jewish state bguaranteed that it cannot permit the Arab minority to become a bmajority. The most fundamental law of the state is the linchpin bin that effort. It is the Law of Return that grants automatic entry band Israeli citizenship to any Jew. That is the key to the in- bsistence that Jews will be a majority that controls the Jewish bsovereignty, political power, military might, and destiny of the bcountry. Would Israel allow the Arabs through peaceful de- bmocracy to become a majority? If that question can be asked, no bArab is really equal. If that question can be answered in the baffirmative, there is no Jewish state.

bBut it is more than that. It is the specific and unique at- bmosphere that is created by a Jewish state. The language, the re- bligion, its holidays, the heroes, the ties to the outside Jewish bworld, the very air, become Jewish. The Jew in Boston or Rot- bterdam, Melbourne or Johannesburg, Moscow or Montreal, bfeels that Israel is “his,” and his right to it is stated by the Dec- blaration of Independence as being deeper than that of the bIsraeli-born Arab. It is not by material benefits alone that a man bor woman lives. He, she, both, need to feel that the land is theirs, btheir political, cultural, spiritual home; that they belong. No bArab can say that about Israel as he sings the “Hatikva” or lis- btens to the Jewish Agency, United Jewish Appeal, and World bZionist Organization speeches. “Oppression” need not be phys- bical. It can be, and usually is, the atmosphere of living under bsomeone else’s majority rule, never being truly “home.” That is bthe Arab plaint.

bIf the Arab is unhappy about this, one can understand. It is b